Seeing Red
by Aubretia Lycania
Summary: Thomas Raith feels like a loser; gone from playboy to schmuck on his younger brother’s couch, he takes time out of his minimum wage existence to tell us about a day in the life of a sex vampire become hero. Takes place between Blood Rites and Dead Beat.
1. Prologue: To whom it may concern

Author: Aubretia Lycania

Description: Thomas Raith feels like a loser; gone from playboy to schmuck on his younger brother's couch, he takes time out of his minimum wage existence to tell us about a day in the life of a sex vampire, living like a frat boy in an abstinence house. Takes place between _Blood Rites_ and _Dead Beat_. Warnings for Thomas luvins, big kid language, and vapid snarkery.

Author's Notes: This was written wholly for my original work fanboy David, who got me into the Dresden Files at a rough time in my life and has been subsequently exchanging text messages as I've been chomping through them. Plus, I just freaking love Thomas. My apologies to my readers in other fandoms—the muse is a fickle mistress with a discipline-murdering shotgun.

Prologue: To whom it may concern

Alright, for those of you picking this up, let me take a leaf out of Rochester's book and warn you. You're not going to like me.

Sure, you'll _want_ to like me. You'll like things I do, too. You'll be sniffing around me for noble reflexes because you'll be in my head, because I'm the hero's brother. We come from the same stock—the same blood goes running through our veins, and those are your conduits to understanding us, when essence flows into our eyeballs. You've been caught up in an everlasting soulgaze with Harry Dresden, and now you're on the hunt for more. Maybe you think I'm his sparkling vampire equivalent, with inclinations to save the world, take on evil, and overall be a misunderstood average Joe who happens to be cursed with soul-sucking martyrdom, and ends up with the gorgeous lady in the end.

I wish.

My time of glory has been here and gone; seen the moment of my greatness flicker and all that. The height of my romantic life was waking up in the middle of sex with the woman I love and realizing she was on the brink of death—her soul winking out as it became part of my body, and hearing the Hunger scream with a kind of perverse triumph, until I cut it off. It rallied, we struggled, and there was blackness again—while in a suicidal rage it tried to kill me, consume my soul instead. My life with the Hunger (yeah, capital H) is a symbiotic agreement, signed off when I exchanged a young woman's life for power the very first time it stirred in me. I went from an awkward man in his late teens to a sex god.

Oh, don't give me that look. Everyone wants to be a sex god. Everyone wants to be like me. And for those of you who think you don't, watch some more TV and read some more magazines. I can guarantee you that the Raith family will put you back on the straight and narrow in how you ought to see yourself. You want rippling abs, perfect skin, great teeth, the right hair, the right height, the right things to say. Immortality, all the girls you can shake a stick at (or some other phallic symbol my brother has holed up around here). And you don't want to work for it.

At this point my dear little brother would tell you everything has a consequence, and you wouldn't really want to be like me. Not if you lived it. And hey, maybe that's true. Maybe you really, honestly like living in a basement, talking to yourself, eating Froot Loops, making a pittance for saving the world, and never getting the girl. Maybe you think all of that is worth it if it means that you don't have to be ruled by anything else, and you could make what you think are the right decisions on your own watch. Oops, was I just describing Harry?

I can't honestly say I don't believe all of that myself, now that the shining moment is gone. If I'm a sex god now, it's a sick rendition of Eros and Psyche where the deity is a monster, trapped in the dark or cursed to loneliness. If I give into the Hunger now, I risk more than a woman's life, my own self-worth, the roof over my head or my existence. I risk the only family who'll have me, because as much as Harry has his own demons—and boy howdy, does he—he _fights_ them.

Don't get me wrong. Harry is a freeze-dried retard popsicle sometimes, with a temper to rival mine when I haven't eaten or slept, enough power to flatten a house of the Red Court, not an ounce of the control he needs to keep himself under raps, and more repressed sexual desire than a nun at a vibrator convention. He gets himself into more trouble than a big brother can handle, even if I was Superman, and the best I can do at times is show up at the right place, shove him out of the way of a bullet, and pray the next one misses. My brother is gifted with a lot, but none of it is an overabundance of luck; the only thing he decently flirts with is disaster. He's poorer than dirt, doesn't have a water heater, and his job is nigh close to thankless, even though it nearly kills him every other week. I've seen the lady he's got a thing for at a restaurant with that Kincaid guy, though I haven't told Harry. Could've been harmless and he'd deny his feelings anyway. Yeah, like a vampire, a being who feeds off emotions, couldn't tell if his own brother was falling for someone. Don't make me laugh. That's like saying a dog couldn't smell kibble right under his nose.

Long story short, Harry doesn't have much. We didn't grow up together, and until the Red Court ball at Bianca's, I wasn't reasonably sure if my mother had had another child before she passed. I stayed by him and fought, but he'd looked out for me too. In subsequent years I tried to keep him safe, and in return he risked his life against the leader of the White Court to save me. He has nearly no resources, and save the blood between us, our connection is one within a war between our kinds that has rendered us both pariahs, dangerous to both sides. The siblings and the family who have known me since I was a child, professed to care for me, with their infinite resources and immense power, threw me from them at the lowest moment of my life, after nearly taking it. Harry Dresden, recently informed of being my brother, with barely a network or a red cent to call his own, a cramped apartment with no electricity, and a million people who'd love to see him dead or blackmailed into obscurity, took me up without a second thought.

I'd do a lot for family, for my sisters, once upon a time. I'd still protect some of them, if it came down to it—Lara, and Inari in particular. But that human bond, the person you'd do insane, unpredictable, even dark things to protect? I would be a madman for two people—Justine, and for Harry. It might sound funny coming from a vampire, but there's more to life than blood.

And as for Harry, I have to say that even Justine is impermanent. Justine will fade, soon, and her imprint on me will be long-lasting. But Harry and I are brothers. When Murphy and Mouse and Justine have passed on, we'll still be here, having a beer, arguing about who gets the last steak sandwich, running from monkey demons and sneaking into late night monster movies, and we won't look all that much different doing it. I'll probably have a few gray hairs courtesy of Harry's Evil Keneval stunts. He'll probably have lost a limb by then, and I can't guarantee I won't be the perpetrator.

Of course, that projected future requires me to keep the idiot alive into his forties.

Maybe he'll mellow out one day, and be content with saving the world once a decade or something. A guy can hope. It's like being brothers with a race car driver—he's rolled over a few times, caught on fire, staggered out before the whole thing exploded in his face. But when you look at the odds? It's only a matter of pushing it one more time. And then a next. And a next.

This is where we get to the part where you won't like me. I don't have the same faith in humanity as Harry, and he's rocky in that department to begin with. I'd be hunky dory with him consulting for Chicago PD, finding lost items, and being a file clerk for a living, and keeping his stupid head down. If Harry never looks another demon, Denarian, vampire (present company excepted—I'm nice to look at), holy knight, Sidhe queen, soul-chomping ghost, evil wizard (or any wizard really), Warden, loup-garou, Renfield, thrall, or mentor in the eye again in his life, I'd be a happy, happy man. Would I miss the adventure? Sure. I'd let him rescue some temple puppies once in a while for old time's sake. But Jesus Christ on a crutch, I'm too pretty to die of a brother-induced heart attack.

And you, reader? I'd probably toss you in with the sharks, if we met today, and getting rid of you would save his life. He'd probably order me not to. I'd listen to him, because most of the time it's his freak show, and I'm along for the ride. But know that I'm thinking it. I'm not a good guy.

Harry can have all the friends he wants, but if it was my apartment, and I had an inch more say, I'd lock him in his room for fifty years. Oh, I'm sorry, you say Chicago might go up in flames if Harry Dresden doesn't save your asses again? Yeah, he's in the can. Have a nice life. The world could be plunged into eternal winter if Harry Dresden doesn't do some more crazy shit and then get shot at for doing it? Call someone who cares.

Don't get me wrong. I like the world. I even like some of the people in it, despite not feeding on them. But my brother is the one always having to save it without an inch of backup aside from me, some raggedy college students, a five-foot-nothing police officer, a barking puppy and a wise-cracking skull, and still the Council treats him like a psychopath needing a straight jacket. He can't walk in a park without getting shot at. I think your world sucks, and you don't know a good thing when you see it. Worse, it's a world that destroys people like Harry Dresden. It's a world full of people who would rather not get involved, keep their heads down, ignore the truth, preserve their reality, and stay alive.

People like who I used to be.

Asking all of this is asking Harry not to be the person he is, and to be honest I can't do it. I can _not care_ about lots of things and people, but he can't, and I can't _not care_ about him. But I'd just as soon toss a person endangering his life out a moving car than save them and hope for the best. It's perhaps wrong and shallow, and not the mentality of a hero. But maybe you can understand.

Right now, he's all I've got. I have a feeling that will be true for a large portion of my life.


	2. Enter the wrath eaters

Chapter 1: Enter the wrath-eaters

Ah, yes. A moment of nostalgia.

There was a time when I would flick my wrists and a Catholic schoolgirl's panties would vanish like magic in the next town over. I'd toss my hair, and there would be a sexual disturbance in the Force. You heard me. A thousand voices crying out in orgasm and then silence. I could walk into nightclubs and part straight men like the Red Sea, lest a single one of them look too interested. I'm not bragging here. This stuff is cold, hard metaphysical fact, and if I walked into your bedroom right now, things would probably happen. Things you would like, believe me. That's what makes me such a delicious monster—it's instant Stockholm Syndrome with a smile and a sway of the hips. And so long as I don't give a flying rat's ass about you, things are normally sort of okay. A sip here, a sip there, you get it back eventually, and I stay alive. But there's so much more.

My world is a road of five-star restaurants with me riding a boatload of cash, and I'm straggling along surviving on stale peanuts. I get a brother out of it, who's a good man. And I can live with myself.

But under this mortal exterior I'm a supernatural being—I can leap fifteen feet and punch a hole in concrete with the right amount of energy, and coax your daughter out of her virginity from the next state. So believe me when I say the mighty have fallen.

I can't even hold down a job making coffee.

"Hi there, welcome to Starbucks! My name is Thomas. How are you doing today?"

As if I cared.

This particular adventure begins at the nexus of pain and suffering in the universe—opening shift at a Starbucks drive-thru in a major city. At the time I'd kept the job longer than the others, finding the whole café environment kind of conducive to my nature. My first few weeks were all closing shifts—you get kids in the shop proper, sitting in comfy chairs studying, with Aretha Franklin playing and not too many people in the drive-thru. They never start you on the headsets, and I worked with a couple guys every night. There weren't many "partners" (Starbucks doesn't call you an employee, but a partner… at 7.25 an hour, I really doubted I had stock options) who liked the closing shift. You have to do a boatload of prep and dishes, mop while making drinks, keep the place clean in between blending and training and being cheerful. But overall, it was relaxed. I ran the till and did dishes, even got to listen to my MP3 player in back while I scrubbed. The more relaxed I am—and the customers are—the better able I'm able to keep myself under raps.

I learned a lot about making coffee, and it occurred to me that I could do this café deal. It was chill and intimate, people talking about the University of Chicago and politics and who's dating whom. Girls were too wound up in their midterms to notice me, and I was pounding away to music in the back, making money and shriveling my hands a little. Prune fingers in exchange for some self-respect? Not bad.

Then the manager lost a morning person. I was one of the few non-students, and my availability was way open. When I got my schedule, I found six days in a row of 4:00 AM shifts. Holy. Crap.

There are some things I have in common with Harry. I am not a morning person. And things just get worse when we have to carpool, because then he's in a bad mood too. Then you have the general atmosphere of a Starbucks at five in the morning. People running around for five hours straight, angry women in Hummers and kids screaming in backseats, everyone wearing drive-thru headsets, drinks on the fly, crazy complicated orders (and none of these people think it's fair to have to put their own sweeteners in their coffee once we gave it to them). All in all, I've never despised the human race more than I did that week. People are at their worst before coffee, and they display it going the whole hog when you're a face inside a crackling menu. And still the manager stalked around among us, reminding us with this maddening, forced smile.

"Don't forget to ask—how are you doing today? How are you doing today? How are you doing today? Thomas, smile some more. Did you ask them how they're doing today?"

_How are you doing today?_

_How are you doing today?_

I still have nightmares.

But I couldn't lose this job. Harry hadn't gotten a paycheck from SI for a couple weeks, the investigations business was slow, and he had nothing going except a hunt for some handed-down watch with a nominal fee. I had to make it until schedules came out, now that I'd turned in new availability, citing my roommate and travel options as a deterrent to opening shift. My control was skidding down a ninety degree slope coated in pudding. And to make matters worse (Margaret LeFay bequeathed to her sons dark hair, fair height, great chins, silver pentacles, and horrible luck), the manager was a woman.

When she came by again, I gritted my teeth for another barrage, capping a couple of dry non-fat cappuccinos with two equals on the bottom, fully expecting her to go into it again about cheerfulness. Instead she reminded me that paychecks were on the counter on the other side of the pastry case. Man. I thought I was going to wet myself with relief—which I avoided, noting sternly to myself that it wouldn't be the most suave option for an ultra-hot sex vampire, no matter how low I'd sunk. When my break rolled around (Starbucks is great about breaks and never letting you work too long without one, which is apparently two hours), I had the thing open. I'd worked an inhuman number of hours over the two weeks leading up to it, taking shifts from sick folks and at other stores, trying to close whenever I could, or take the mid-afternoon swing shifts when the place is relaxed and steady. I'd racked up nearly five-hundred dollars before taxes.

I used to not quite know the value of a buck, but after a few months of being penniless and eating ramen, the paycheck had an all-new glimmer. That was a lot of beer and steak sandwiches from Mac's. Harry was gonna force me to save a bunch of it, of course, so I could move my ass off his couch, but I could treat us to a good meal, grab groceries, help with Mouse's shots. I felt a weird, dizzy kind of glee, a feeling that I could _do_ this, could really survive without the House of Raith, and kissed the little paycheck like it was my new lover. I tucked it into a safe pocket in my dark slacks and returned to work. In retrospect I'm glad I didn't put it in one of the lockers—after what happened next, I would have utterly forgotten it.

Ten more minutes of morning insanity ensued. I fetched muffins, put whip and caramel topping on a slew of fraps, took orders, steamed milk, made copious amounts of foam (don't look at me like that), poured shots, and generally ran a marathon while dodging other members with headsets and panicked expressions on their faces. Gotta get to the next coffee. The next coffee. The next coffee. No end in sight.

Then I saw it. A silvery, somehow tainted sheen off pale skin, and an argument had begun between a coworker of mine and a customer in his car. Amanda, a larger girl who wasn't quite flattered in the uniform Starbucks green apron, leaned out the window in the throes of a wicked altercation. The man in the car, from whom that nasty sheen had hit my peripheral vision, smiled with a curl of the lips that could only be perverse enjoyment, and Amanda only seemed to rile more. He said another word, and as he spoke, I could detect the power of a Hunger like my own, roiling off his skin and twisting like a knife into the young barista. Her rage towered, and he'd begun to feed.

I am personally an erotophage—I pull people into the haze of desire and I feed off their lust. Everyone creates and exudes massive amounts of energy during sex, and quite a bit of it is wasted. I take it up and people enjoy it as I do so—and during first times, I never take enough that they couldn't refuel after a couple weeks. Not all White Court vampires are erotophages—some feed off fear, others on hatred. I suppose one could feed off unbridled joy, off sorrow, and I'm sure I know of smaller families who partake of strange flavors indeed. We're all more or less wired and taught to feed a certain way—by default I feed off lust, but I could feed off other emotions if I tried. But just because monkey brains are technically a food source, and could technically nourish you, doesn't mean your body isn't going to get serious indigestion on the first ten times in. It doesn't mean you won't be grossed out by the whole thing and never do it again. And if you do, it doesn't mean you won't be altered forever by breaking one of your taboos. If watching a monkey stare at you, still alive, while you eat his brains becomes normal, you might have changed forever as well. I'm not saying it'll be a good or bad thing, because that depends on you.

Long story short, I found myself looking right in the face of a White Court thymophage—eaters of wrath.

Let me tell you a little something about rage. Fear is a feeling that dampens the spirit, and it's sick to enjoy it—but it preserves life. Lust, by proxy, also creates life. And if you're someone like my brother Harry, you might use righteous anger to keep yourself alive. But the kind of rage my cousin vampires feed off of isn't so simple as that. It's that shaking, paralyzing, soul-draining wrath that makes your spirit flare to life before consuming itself. Rage wears out of the mind and body, stresses the resources, and burns other emotions down to cinders. It's there with the purpose to kill—sometimes others, but in the end, oneself. A being that feeds on rage has no intention of letting their victims last long—fury, jealousy, towering rage, can make you totally and utterly insane. Victims of thymophages can go berserker, going on bloody massacres, before they disappear. This was the kind of rampage the eaters of wrath got their kicks from.

It's because of all this that I did something incredibly stupid.

Without thinking, I stepped forward before the manager could get in the middle of things. Cars were honking in the drive-thru, and the rage was rippling out into other employees, into the other waiting customers, in a red-tinged silver haze stretching from the car into the shop proper. I could nearly taste the obscene, twisted power of the thymophage just starting to get his fill. There was a moment of irrational, hateful jealousy, and the Hunger spoke within me. I could feel it altering my features, making me look like the starving hunter I'd become, lean and catlike, features harsh and shadowy.

_He has already opened her. Either he drinks her rage or you do. Take it. Now._

I faltered as this flickered into my mind, firmly telling the demon to shut the hell up. It has a nasty habit of not listening.

_What if they are here for your brother? You could drink the girl's rage and become stronger in case a battle is coming. We are starving. Give me what I need and in return you will have all the power you could ask. Did he not save you the last time? Are you not his elder brother? Things could be different. You could protect him_.

Let me remind you that Harry Dresden is a big wall in between my demon and regular feedings. What's worse, brotherly love might not burn me like Justine, but it's not exactly comfortable either. It's precisely why I avoid physical contact with my brother; when he and the demon come near, my skin heats to high temperatures, something Mister Wizard is bound to figure out soon enough. The Hunger despises Harry, but it does know how to best manipulate me—and it isn't above using any loved one to get what it wants.

In line with that sentiment, my answer was an unceremonious _Fuck you_.

In the few seconds that it took for this conversation to take place, I'd pulled Amanda forcefully away from the window, turning to the thymophage with a thundering, rather idiotic Dresden-style "Hey!"

That was when I realized he'd been waiting for my reaction, and I had about half a second to hit the ground before his buddy in the back seat opened fire on me with a machine gun.


	3. Out of dodge

I had the presence of mind to drag that heifer Amanda down to the floor with me, so meat didn't start flying immediately after the glass and espresso machine behind me exploded. Dead coworker equals bad.

Wipe that smile off your face. I'm no morning person, remember? If we lost another opener, I'd be stuck in the seventh circle of coffee hell, serving soccer moms and CEOs until I went on a homicidal skull-bashing spree. Never underestimate my ability to be courageously, hardheadedly selfish under fire.

The drive-thru portion of the store was a square-shaped area that connected in an L to the rest of the employee work space behind the bar, and the rest of the baristas had the sense to stay on the other portion of this, protected by a layer of wall and counter from the blasts. I could hear people screaming, someone on their cell phone dialing 911 frantically. The rage had left everyone in the store as though a switch had been flicked off, but it dawned on me that the thymophages could have drawn it up already—not all of it, but that static, the emotional discharge that emits off people. Maybe from so many of them it was a decent meal, but I had the sense this wasn't what they'd been after.

The gunshots stopped. Amanda was blubbering a few inches from me, her makeup smeared and her face pressed into the filthy mats that elevated our feet above sticky coffee spills, creating a honeycomb impression in her pasty cheek. I almost stood, until I saw the egg-sized rock which had skittered into the drive-thru area under one of the counters. A piece of inoffensive paper had been taped around it, and it bore my name.

Shit.

White Court vampires had found and targeted me, and judging by the style of message delivery, it wasn't so we could get together over tea for tales of sexual daring-do. Thymophages are more than distasteful; they're dangerous. As with phobophages—I have cousins in this particular class of vampire—the taking of rage into your being can make you sick. You are what you eat. If what you consume is meant to destroy, then eventually it's gonna eat away at your insides, like chugging acid.

I heard wheels skid away on the other side of the wall. Glass fell out of my hair as I shifted, and before Amanda could get her wits together I grabbed the rock and pocketed it. Sirens sounded not far in the distance, and cars from the drive-thru went out to the parking lot or stayed where they were, and people came out and looked in the window, checking to see if we were sitting there like gutted fish, flittering about, calling the police, coming in to see if they could help. Others just… wandered away, in denial, in shock, not wanting to deal with it. All the rage of a moment ago, the honking horns and shouted insults, seemed forgotten.

Good grief. If all it takes to make people work together is spray machine guns at them, humans are doing just dandy as a species.

Once they were reasonably sure no one else was going to gun them down, coworkers came around the wall towards us. One girl, barely eighteen, was crying. And God help me (actually, preferably not), my demon has awful timing about this stuff.

_You could make her feel better. Girls are always so vulnerable after these ordeals. She could use someone to be close to._

I flinched, this time with no answer to it. I was startled, scared for myself and for whom I lived with after the encounter, and other employees were crushing around Amanda and myself. I could feel their hands brushing my skin, then trying to haul me up—always contact, pawing at me, my flesh hitting theirs, and my defenses falling… I could hear my own voice in my head, transforming into that of the Hunger's, morphing all my thoughts into that tunnel-vision of need, infecting my rational brain.

_They are most certainly up to something. It could be blackmail. They might know of Justine, or that you live with your brother. You will need all the strength you can get. And it will make her feel so much better. She'll give to you freely. See how frightened she is? You would be doing her a favor._

Damned if the thing didn't make persuasive arguments. It knew me like a favorite children's book, backwards and forwards.

_Shut the hell up. I need to concentrate_.

I needed, to be more precise, to get the hell away from all these touching people. My control was slipping dangerously, and already a few of the men were giving me strange looks, while the women started getting that dazed look that commonly precedes them taking their tops off. Bethany had great tits. Her inhibitions were starting to look awfully low.

I heard the sirens grow louder, and the rock pronounced itself as a leaden weight against my leg. I needed to get out of here before the police showed up, get to the office, and confer with Harry. I'd taken the Blue Beetle that morning (the damn thing is not blue—it's practically a rolling gay pride flag. Sometimes I wonder about my little brother), and he'd probably bummed a ride or taken a cab or the bus to his office. It was one of those poor months and I'd bet on him taking the bus, which is sorta cute. I should've asked him if he had his milk money. I was supposed to pick him up later on in the day after running the errands and we'd take care of dinner together, so it was a simple matter to get to him, provided he wasn't out investigating. Problem with that little plan was that my jacket and keys were in the lockers, fully on the other side of the store.

"Tom?" One of the male baristas was shaking me slightly. "You alright? Tom?"

Only people who have sex with me typically call me by shortened names, but Starbucks baristas had called me everything from Tommy to T-dawg. I flinched again, and smiled with feigned shakiness.

"Yeah… I just feel… sorta sick. I should… yeah."

He was nodding emphatically. "Need some water?"

I smiled again, more winning this time. "Thanks, man. I just need to go sit down."

With that I was off to the back like a shot, passing the manager, who was checking on customers in the store. I grabbed my keys, my jacket, left the apron and my other pair of shoes behind, took the manager's key from on her desk, and disarmed the emergency door in back. Before I left I wiped them down again with my apron, feeling paranoid, tossed them from the apron to her desk, threw the apron in the linen pile, and opened the press-bar door with my hips. It closed quietly and unobtrusively behind me. From there, avoiding the front windows and doors, I dodged over to the beetle at a sprint. I pulled out onto the road about five seconds before the police entered from the other end of the parking lot, and put-putted down the street, away from the scene. So far, so good.

When I parked at the office building, I sat in the car for a moment, regaining a modicum of control so that this didn't become a battle with Harry where I started telling him to keep his head down and not be an idiot. It occurred to me that this might not concern him at all, and that I could, rather deviously, keep him in the dark if that was the case. But that wasn't fair to him. He always made me aware of danger with us living in the same place, and if I didn't tell him I'd been targeted, I could put him in more danger than the alternative. Moreover, we could both be targeted, and the sooner we were on the same page, the better. That in mind, it was time to examine the note; I pulled the rock from my pocket, unwrapping the taped note.

It was a small envelope made from printer paper, a terse memo and two cheap Walgreens photograph prints. The first one showed Harry entering his apartment. The date stamp in the corner was a week earlier, 2:04 PM. The second was me entering the same apartment, alone, keys in hand, at 4:56 PM on the same day. I swallowed a ball of dread and fury that had begun to well in the back of my throat; it landed in my stomach with a thud, and sat there, a cold, slimy weight, the knowledge that I had placed my brother in danger. I was pathetic and he would never toss me out or turn his back on me, and these thymophages, scum even for White Court, could harm him because of me. Ignoring a faint red haze and a chuckling Hunger in the back of my head, I went on to read the note.

_Thomas Raith, scion of House Raith—_

_The White Court and the Council of wizards would be interested to discover what we have. But there is no need for things to turn ugly. Your roommate or erotic energy source is powerful and a great spring of rage, a food supply we have been unable to resist. Help your White Court brethren acquire him and no harm will fall on you. We have already opened him to our feeding by the time you are reading this note._

_You will contact us at an address we will furnish to you via the telephone at your home. Be near the connection at 6 PM sharp. You will come to the address with your lover or alone. You are being watched. Do not contact anyone, including those in the House of Raith, for assistance. Any movements we deem suspect will result in an anonymous tip to a warden of the Council to remove you._

_We hope to conduct fortuitous business with you._

_Sincerely,_

_The House Alecto_

I blinked at the note for a minute. Something was niggling at me, though as I staved off the Hunger it eluded me. Were these Looney Tunes for real? They'd give up favor with House Raith by uncovering what could be termed a rogue scion, power in the White Court through the public death of Harry Dresden, just so they could eat him? Then again, they thought I was eating him too. I was sure they couldn't deem what business a the son of the most powerful White Courter family head would have living with the wizard Dresden if it wasn't to snack on him. They thought we were lovers, and that I'd part with a food source and let my fellow White Courters have a taste of Dresden a la mode in exchange for silence. A simple manipulation of our more political, subtle kind, and a transaction I would be reasonably expected to comply with, if vampires and wizards weren't so fiercely at war with one another. These thymophages were passing up a much larger political opportunity by focusing solely on their Hunger.

I can understand motivators like power, sex, and money. I can also understand family, love, loyalty, friendship, obligations. And in a deep fashion, I do understand the Hunger, intimately. But I can't think of a time when I would go to such lengths to have a particular vessel if anyone would do, if anyone could feel lust. But then again, I'd cared deeply for Justine, and what she'd fed me had been more pure and deep than any other source. Harry could be their equivalent on the scale of rage—someone who hated people like them, who was a great source of wrath for the White Court, who had a wellspring of power that he drew from in moments of anger. What sex was for Justine and I could be what feeding off Harry might be for these psychos.

But something didn't track. I went back over the note, and that's when the thing that had niggled me about it hit me, in a horrible rush.

_We have already opened him to our feeding by the time you are reading this note._

Holy. Mother. Fucking. Crap.

They'd already gotten to my brother.


	4. Thrill of the hunt

I hadn't fed in a while—in both the physical and supernatural sense—so seeing the broken elevator, a calling card courtesy of the presence of Harry Dresden, made me curse under my breath purely for the fact that running all those flights of stairs was going to be more than an annoyance. I huffed and puffed and prayed (to what I'm not sure) the whole way up that Harry hadn't stepped out. But, you know, if we had that kind of luck, we wouldn't have as much fun as we do. If we had that much luck, we'd be in Cozumel by now with some beautiful girls and cocktails, the hell out of dodge.

Screw luck. If we had those kinds of _brains_, we'd be in Cozumel.

I already felt stupid by the time I reached the door. I needed to get him out of Chicago, if I had any smarts. If those photographs went to the Wardens, there'd be no saving either of us—Harry would be a traitor and I'd be his partner in crime. Our heads would be decorating a Warden's sword like cherries on a cocktail pick faster than you can say John the Baptist.

I tried the door and found it locked, then knocked a few times, calmly. Harry had either stepped out or he'd been left in the office, unconscious. Or one of a million other improbable but totally possible options out of the grab bag of Shit that Happens to Harry Dresden. I have keys to the office—and I really don't need to describe why when you know you're dealing with people who routinely run from flying, flaming demon shit—and let myself in quietly, waiting for some kind of assault.

There was none. Harry's dumbass pamphlets hadn't been disturbed, the comfy chairs he reserved for clients sat at aesthetically pleasing angles to the desk, and the place was in reasonable, respectable order that revealed how much time Harry had probably had on his hands since he came to work that morning. I flicked through my brother's Rolodex for a number, sat on the desk (looking relaxed and sexy, just in case the place was being watched), and perched the phone on my thigh to dial Karrin Murphy. She's the only one on Harry's end of the deal that knows we're related (Lara knows on my side), and would have been the only person who would find me looking for Harry normal and not alarming. I knew I couldn't tip her off and couldn't be reasonably sure how far these creeps had gone into surveillance and tapping lines, so I decided to err on the side of extreme, annoying caution. And let's face it, I'm an amazing liar. People like it when I lie to them. I am a walking, talking, sex-oozing lie.

"This is Murphy." Looks like I have some luck after all.

"Hey, Karrin," I said casually, with a smile in my voice. "I was supposed to pick Harry up today since I had the car and he's not at the office. He working on a case for you?"

"You know I can't discuss a case with you, Thomas."

I could hear Murphy smiling slightly; on some level, she can't help but like me and the idea of Harry having a brother. Maybe it reveals something about an old friend she hadn't seen before. Or maybe she just likes my abs.

"Ah, so there is a case," I taunted lightly, before turning polite again. "I don't need to know much—just someplace you might have sent him so I can pick him up. I'm sure he'll need the car if you've got more running around for him to do."

"Sure, I sent him to ask a few members of the occult community a few questions. He said something about that pub and a bookstore. But he said you wouldn't be off work until twelve"—here I heard her frown. "Don't you work at a Starbucks, Thomas?"

Oh crap. Murphy is a cop—by now she could have easily heard about the shooting. I stayed smiling, totally oblivious.

"Yeah. We were overstaffed. I've picked up more hours than anybody so they sent me home. I'll check Mac's for Harry. Thanks, Karrin."

I wasn't going to give her a chance to argue and ask questions, but I hesitated for a moment as a voice entered my thoughts again.

_Tell her about the shooting—she will think you have been injured. Women love to mother and pamper, and to see a man vulnerable._

"Thomas, wait." Murphy's voice sounded commanding, and I teetered between the two conversations, grimacing. "I know the kind of crazy stuff that goes on around Harry Dresden. Are you sure nothing happened at your Starbucks this morning?"

Her voice had shifted, undulating with the power of a police officer. She expected certain answers, and she thought she already knew the truth.

_I think she loves Harry. I can't touch her._

The Hunger seemed to hesitate, but did not quiet.

"Thomas? Are you there? Was it or was it not your Starbucks that was fired on twenty minutes ago? It just came over on dispatch."

Crapcrapcrapcrap.

_You don't know that for sure. And they have never acted upon it. She is still open to you. Perhaps she might even be persuaded by the family resemblance._

That one didn't just make me feel insulted, but a little sick. Lapping up psychic energy from the woman who would rather be sleeping with my brother and playing on common features was a kind of low a fabulous incubus worth his salt should never sink to. Or any man with a brother, for that matter. Since Justine went down, it was really beginning to dawn on me that the one thing the Hunger simply could not fully understand was affection for others. As the antithesis of love, the demon couldn't grasp why, instead of a feeling of competitive elation, I would feel sick at the idea of stealing someone my brother could have a chance with.

"Thomas! Are you injured? Starbucks number 5023. Is that your place of employment? Do you need me to send a bus? Thomas?"

I thought of a lie, quick. "Sorry, Karrin, I set the phone down for a second to go through Harry's files. Can't ever do enough snooping. Did you say something?"

Silence on the other end of the line. Crap, she had to be onto me.

"Thomas. I'll ask one more time. Do you work at Starbucks number 5023?"

I swallowed, tried not to hesitate. "Yes."

"Were you there twenty minutes ago?"

"What time is it?"

"10:34."

"I left at ten." The lie was so easy. You have to understand—Karrin Murphy is a nice lady, and she helped Harry save my life. But I had to keep him safe, and that meant I had to throw her under the bus on this one. She blew out a breath.

"Tell Harry to call me the moment you get him home."

_Click._

I had a sinking feeling she'd be using that phone call to tell Harry about the shooting and how she thought I was lying, in danger or up to something. I can't say I like the idea of Murphy conspiring with my brother against me like that, but the whole police thing is her job. I may not like it but I can understand it.

I locked up the office behind me and ran down the stairs at a furious clip, removing my jacket in the process from a growing feeling of uncomfortable warm.

The Hunger squirmed.

I took a moment to cash my check before going into Mac's, in case I needed money the rest of the day while Harry and I figured out what to do. The stairwell into the pub was inviting, like going down into Harry's apartment—somewhere safe, a sanctuary. The sign that read "ACCORDED NEUTRAL TERRITORY" reassured me, unreasonably. It meant that no Warden could attack me, and Harry and I could sit at a booth together without appearing suspicious. Everyone at the pub already knew I'd been a second against him in a duel with the Red Court. We could be discussing any number of negotiations for the war, one vampire and one wizard, and lesser practitioners wouldn't know the difference. Only Mac seems to get that we're more than passing acquaintance or even friends… though I'm sure Harry wouldn't like what he thinks is the alternative. I do know that whenever Harry comes here, Mac sends him home with a bottle of ale for me. And vice versa.

The place is basically a big anthill, with chairs and tables and fans and columns all there to keep crazy bottle rockets like Harry from shaking the place up when they get angry. It all moves energy around in loops and spirals and disperses it, which translates to a relaxed environment for me as well. It's harder for my Hunger to try reaching people here, which taxes my control a lot less than anywhere else. It means that even though it might whisper in my ear, I don't have to worry about it reaching out, about things getting out of my grasp, even if I'm feeling wild with the need to hunt. It's the same comfort as being an alcoholic, wanting to stop, wanting a drink so bad you can scratch your own face off, but being tied to a pole. It's maddening but you know you won't disappoint yourself because you physically can't. And that means you don't have to fight as hard, for a while at least. It's just a respite, a kind of oasis. But I can even taste the effect in one of Mac's beers, chilled back at home.

When I came down the stairs at a furious clip, Mac was the only person to look at me. A couple of people sat hunkered down with some ale in a corner and two more played chess. He'd barely opened forty minutes earlier, and wouldn't have a crowd until lunch. I sat down at the bar, nodding at the ale; Mac had already begun pouring. Harry was nowhere in sight, but that didn't mean he hadn't been there. An empty mug sat beside me on the bar, evidence of a patron just left, and a five left beneath it. Mac saw me looking as he parked the drink in front of me.

"Seen Harry?" I kept my voice hushed.

"Ungh," Mac offered prosaically, twitching his head at the empty mug as he bused the counter. I'd have to take that as a _Yes, my good sir. Harry Dresden was certainly here not long ago. He sat for an early morning ale while asking me questions about something an annoying CPD officer has her panties in a bunch over._

My brother had been here not long ago and he was safe (or safe enough) when he'd left. The Alecto creeps had either been lying or the timing was just such that he hadn't been affected until his next location.

"He leave with anyone?"

Mac arched an eyebrow at me, evidently wondering if he was about to be caught up in some kind of lover's quarrel. I let him think what he wanted and supped my ale mysteriously. At length, he shook his head, a look on his face meant to relieve me of my worries. Oh, good. It's nice to know that Mac would watch my back if any of my many gay lovers ever decided to cheat on me.

I decided to stay on this train and gave Mac a relieved smile.

"He's been… distant."

"Ungh," Mac said, sounding understanding. I had to really reign myself in from going to town on this one, reminding myself that Harry was still in danger.

"He say where he might be headed to next? I've got his car."

In response, he handed me a business card from under the counter for Bock Ordered Books, complete with address and a little line about occult literature. Bock's is pretty much firm wizard territory, and a big risk for me to be seen there—fraternizing with the enemy and all that. On the other hand, Harry getting cracked open for the drinking by a bunch of rage vampires wouldn't be good for us either.

As I speculated on the card for a moment, Mac seemed to grasp my distress—I'm fairly sure he knows I'm a scion, albeit cut off, of House Raith, ever since the duel with Ortega used this as neutral territory. In response, he plucked the card from my hand with two fingers and took the phone into a back room. He was gone for a few moments, then returned, card in hand. He gave it back to me, and placed a bottle of ale on the counter.

I turned the card over, where Mac had written on the back of it:

_Gone home._

"Thanks, man," I said, and meant it. I placed a few bills on the counter, finished my beer, picked up the bottle for Harry, and headed out. I'm no investigator, and I'm no Harry Dresden. I personally think it'd be dumb to wander into wizard territory on the off-chance I could get answers that Harry could give me himself, and that would be assuming I wanted answers. I couldn't know anything until I saw Harry anyways.

I bit my lip as I trotted to the Blue Beetle, low budget steed of the Shambling TV-Dinner Wizard of Right and Grump, and drove home.

As I pulled up, a bright blue flash overcame my vision, like a peel of azure lightening, and I stumbled out of the car with Harry's shotgun out of the back and in my hand in a millisecond.

Someone had just thrown an assload of magic at the apartment's wards.


	5. Bottled rage

Now, keep in mind as I tell you all this that my brother Harry is a crazy guy. We're talking about someone who thinks that a good day consists of fighting a couple ogres and not breaking both his legs off. But there's method to his madness—he's a tool, a total weakling when it comes to a pretty damsel in distress or a chance to save the human race. At the end of the day, after he's done talking to himself, trying to kill himself in the most creative ways possible, and all around looking like a madman with the brain that could've been fished out of an aquarium, he shambles home and has a beer and looks normal again. Believe me, I live with it. He puts his feet up, reads books, and eats pizza like any guy I've ever cared to know.

So you really have to imagine my surprise when I came home in the middle of a workday to see my dear little brother flinging magic at his wards and yelling at people I couldn't see.

I stopped dead for a moment at the top of the stairs, trying to take in what I was seeing, just as Harry threw another spell at the wards, where the magic was absorbed in a resounding lightshow that sent us both sprawling several feet backwards. Harry had flung up his shield, and because of our proximity when I came up the power had missed me for the most part as well—even so I opened my eyes on the asphalt of the street, feeling like a small car had run me over.

Harry hadn't noticed me, but instead he'd gotten back up and went forward again.

"Tell me where he's at, you bastard!" he yelled, and I squinted to see if someone was veiled in the area. Maybe they'd managed to turn the wards against him somehow? I really need to pay more attention when he rambles on about magic.

As though he'd been answered, Harry began again. "I don't believe you!" He sounded pained though, and it was then, as the blue light of his wards faded, that I could see a second, insidious layer of magic around my brother: a silvery sheen with sparks of hateful red. I came fully to the top of the steps as he prepared another spell, now very sure that he was not only alone, but out of his damn mind.

"Harry!"

I'm not sure what my plan was. My abilities with magic are minimal, despite my witch mother, and all the power I've got seems to go to the Hunger. But I can run fast and withstand a lot of damage, and in his current state, I was feeling sure I could redirect Harry's rage and get through to him. I was not prepared for his reaction, however.

For a moment he didn't seem to have heard me; then slowly he spun, looking up the stairs at me with wide eyes.

"Thomas?" I'd be damned if he didn't sound… scared? "But they said… I saw your… you were…"

He was probably hallucinating the whole thing, so I had to work myself into it, like with a sleep walker. I did some quick thinking. "You got hit with a spell—they're gone. I got you back to the apartment. Let's get you inside, man."

He nodded numbly, frowning at me, at my arms, and gazing around, as though he were seeing the big metal apartment door for the first time. By the time I'd trotted down with my keys and talisman at the ready to get inside the wards, he was slumping against the wall. He'd been fed on, and they'd used him to attack the wards. I wasn't sure what else they could do, but I knew the threshold would weaken their ability to get to him, and the wards—though weaker now—would keep them out, otherwise they wouldn't want them down so much. Whatever they'd sent into Harry's mind, and how ever, wouldn't be as strong when we got into the apartment.

He seemed drained, and his eyes flicked around, confused.

"Thomas?"

I was unlocking the door in a hurry and kept getting the wrong key. My hand was shaking. I felt Hungry and empty with worry, and Harry being off his rocker wasn't helping.

"I think I just saw them again. They're still here."

I took a steadying breath. "We have to get inside. We'll regroup and then deal with them, alright?" I had the door unlocked with a triumphant click and when Harry stumbled, I got him around the ribs and through the door.

Something odd happened as we passed the threshold, a weird sticking feeling, as though I were trying to move Harry's body through a thick wall of gelatin. His threshold used to not be so hot—one single guy and a cat living there, crashing and eating and obsessing over a lost love. But with myself and Mouse there too, I've felt it grow stronger, more than the connections in our blood forming extra webbing over the doorway. It had become more powerful as our friendship grew, and though no children or romance knew those rooms, the threshold was closer to that which you see over the doors of a busy home. That power was operating on Harry now as I pulled him in, stripping the influence away from him. The silver sheen vanished, left as a haze outside in the afternoon light, and I slammed the door on it.

I turned to see Harry looking at me, his eyes sane again; he was dressed in jeans, a black t-shirt and his leather duster, with a glove covering his mutilated left hand, and he still grasped his staff that he'd been using to fling his _Fuego_ spell at his own wards. Its carved runes still glowed bright red and seemed to smoke slightly, giving off the smell of brimstone. I don't question him about it, but I've been fairly sure that's the smell of Hell coming out of my brother's staff. He was leaning on it at the moment, resting his head on its end.

"How did you know something was happening to me?"

"Sitting. Then questions," I rebuked.

I ushered him to the couch first and grabbed us both Cokes, while Mouse, about as big as Mister by now, all paws and fluff and gangly legs, scrambled out of the kitchen alcove to demand a pat on the head before bounding over into my brother's lap. Harry scratched the puppy's notched ear with his healthy right hand; he appeared pale, and a sheen of clammy sweat had appeared on his forehead, but he didn't show much more damage than that—I figured he was just as fatigued from fighting the influence that had come over him and churning up spells as he was from what the thymophages might have taken from him. I gave him the note and its contents wordlessly, observing his face as he read it. His reaction surprised me; when he was done he put them down, calmly, no rage evident on his face. Maybe he didn't have the energy to conjure more anger, or they'd drained all he could muster for the time being.

"Do you recognize these guys?" he asked. "They seem like they know who you are."

I shook my head. "Not by face or name. The White Court all know me, because I'm Raith's son and he's always sent me around to do his dirty or tedious work. But they came to work and started a feeding to get my attention, before they fired off a machine gun. They're thymophages. White Court vampires who inspire and suck on rage. They can send people into berserker fits, if they're ready to kill them."

Harry crinkled his forehead at the ceiling, resting his head on the back of the couch. "Sounds weird—them going to those extremes when we're at war. If they got me and killed me publically, after how the war started"—

"Yeah, I thought so too," I said, taking a long pull of Coke. It did nothing to quench a kind of rasping, hot thirst growing inside me. "They'd gain huge amounts of power for themselves among the White Court families, and a lot more for them among the vampire courts. But they're driven by hunger. There's so much anger against you, and you've got lots of it yourself. For vampires who eat rage, you're like an orgy with the Playboy bunnies."

Harry laughed. "Remind me to save that for the next high school reunion. That'll show all the popular kids."

I couldn't stop a smile. "Wiseass. Something must've happened to make them open you up the way they did—like the times you've seen me with Justine. There's a moment of contact, where they rile up the emotion they want in you. Then it snowballs and you're under their control."

Harry shuddered visibly. "No. I got a call from Murph, some murders they'd dumped on her lap with people torn apart. Seemed like a normal killing spree to me, or maybe an ogre involved, but she wanted me to look around. So I went to Mac's to see if he'd seen anyone new in town or see if anything was suspicious. He said something about some demons possessing people to make them kill and I went to Bock's to check it out. He'd just got in and he wasn't open per se, but he let me peruse the books. I thumbed through a couple. It's been one of the more boring days this year. Then I…" he trailed off. "I was waiting for the bus back to the office, but my hand started hurting like no tomorrow. I forgot the pain pills in the car last night and I knew it was with you, but there's more here at the apartment—so instead of going back to the office, I got on the bus back home. I think…" he frowned again, like remembering a dream. "I fell asleep on the bus—must've looked like some kind of hobo, but this old lady woke me up before we got to my stop. I got off the bus." He was looking at me now, and seeing beyond me. "Crazy shit started happening. A man I'd never seen before was standing at the top of the stairs leading down here, and he was smiling like a lunatic as I came up. I was just about to get a read on him with my senses when he threw something at my feet."

Harry looked genuinely disturbed. Which, you know, is hard to do, because he's seem some really messed up crap. He's told me about a bunch of his cases—hearts that flew out of people's chests, huge werewolves jumping at him and tearing police officers to shreds, a Knight of the three holy swords laid out and tortured to ribbons in a chapel… he's seen a lot. But when he looked at me I knew they'd gotten to him. I stayed silent, waiting for him to tell me.

"It was…" he got a grip on himself, closing his eyes. "It was your left hand. By itself. Burnt up, the way mine was when it happened. Without the rest of you."

_Get away from him. He will be safer if you leave_. The Hunger sounded genuinely uncomfortable.

The apartment seemed warmer than before, even though it was cold outside; I wanted to strip layers off, but resisted the urge. And almost as though I'd been draining heat from the room, Harry pulled the blanket I'd left on the couch around himself and Mouse. He hid the vulnerable gloved hand from me under the covers. It was one of those moments, those quirks, when the wizard Harry Dresden, who commands immense stores of power and can blasts holes in several buildings at a go, suddenly looks very human, and very fragile. He went on.

"Things get sorta blurry after that, like being drunk. Everything seemed really… red. Like I was in a firestorm. I chased the guy, I don't how far. We were in an alley, but I couldn't describe it if you asked me to. He could throw around a lot of magic, blue lightening bolts. I tried to get him to tell me where you were, what had happened to you. Then I… I don't know. Everything sorta shivered, like an earthquake, and melted, and I was looking up and saw you. Then I was here again. I tried to reason it out and I felt really tired, so it made sense that I'd been unconscious after the last flash of magic that hit me. Then I opened my eyes in here and the red was gone. I can think again." Harry met my eyes. "I've been angry lots of times in my life. But I've always been able to bring up a lot of magic, or run really fast when I am. This time… I don't know. I felt like they wrapped me in plastic. I was weaker, not stronger. The angrier I got, the weaker my magic was."

_You must get away from him. You're selfish, endangering him like this._ The voice of the Hunger sounded too much like mine.

The room was ridiculously hot, but it wouldn't be better outside.

"Maybe we should get out of the city," I ventured, even though I knew his response already.

Harry smiled, a smart ass remark on his tongue already; I could see it brewing in his eyes. "What, won the Buffy the Vampire sweepstakes, Thomas? Gonna take me on that honeymoon to Sunnyvale?"

I didn't give into his amusement this time, though I wanted to fire back with a similar obnoxious remark. When he's around I have the pleasure of being big brother, which means telling him to shut the hell up.

"The further you are from the thymophages, the less they can do to you."

His amusement evaporated and he appeared weary again.

"If we leave, we'll never be able to come back. They'll get the Wardens on our tails and we'll be on the run from wizard law and from the vampires too. Lara can't protect us."

I ran my hand through my hair distractedly. "I don't want you fighting them. I have no idea how big House Alecto is, or how many allies might come after us if we try. They think I'm living with you to feed off you, so they don't have any expectation that I'll protect you. If I do, they'll suspect worse. They could figure it out, and then the whole White Court could know we're brothers. They've got their hands in financial and governmental ventures all over the place, Harry. You don't even want to know how bad things could be for us." I sighed; my own hand felt burning hot. "Plus… until we know how they accessed you, you're stuck in this apartment. You can't fight."

Harry remained silent for a few moments.

"This is our home, Thomas."

_Our_ home. Mouse gave me a doggy grin, licking Harry's hand. The Hunger practically screamed at me. _Getoutgetoutgetout!_

I ignored it, keeping my poker face. "We can discuss it more later. You should sleep and stuff—if you want to have a dream of leaving this apartment again, you'll need all the resources you can get."

"Sleep is for humans," Harry grinned.

I moved over to help him up, as Mouse bounded down onto the floor.

"Yeah, maybe they'll have a cure for that in a thousand years."

Harry winced as my hand touched his back.

"Jesus Christ on a crutch, Thomas—are you sick or something? Can you even _get_ fevers? You're burning up."

My hand had heated immediately on touching my brother, while the Hunger scrambled around trying to get me to let go.

"No," I said, evenly. Harry nodded. Sometimes my brother can be smarter than he looks. Which, you know… isn't really saying much. But it's something. He didn't reply or inquire, just allowed me to get him into his bed so he could drop off for a while.

"Hey," he held me back before I could leave, making me twitch. I didn't want to, but the way the Hunger was raging I needed to get away from him for a while. I needed him asleep and not sitting there caring about me. "I think… maybe these guys have something to do with Murphy's case."

God, at this point I wanted to knock him out. "We can't talk to her about it, Harry. We can't tell anyone. Family project. You and me."

"You ran from the scene of a crime, after someone fired on you. And I'm working on the case with her. Murphy knows you're here, Thomas. She could bring Hell down on us too."

I heard myself laugh. "You're being chased by the scum of the White Court and we're being blackmailed into oblivion. Somehow I doubt Karrin Murphy is our biggest problem."

"Even so, be extra careful around squad cars if you leave the apartment."

I looked at him in disgust, not directed quite at him but the insult of the idea. "I'm not leaving here while you're sleeping. Not with things the way they are."

He smiled at me, and I realized he was half asleep.

"Yeah, I know."

Harry was in dreamland almost before he finished speaking, snoring slightly. I didn't move, watching him for signs of more thymophage activity. I should have gotten him to strip so I could search his clothes for some kind of talisman, though I wouldn't know what best to look for, having no experience with this House Alecto. I threw the blanket over him, and then on a second thought tucked it in, examining his hands as I did so. Nothing new there. A gloved left and a ringed right, the same plain silver circlet he'd worn since the first time we'd met. His shield bracelet, the charms warped and battered, still blackened with signs of burning. Scar tissue showing where the glove ended, mottled red and white skin, unnatural and waxy. His t-shirt and jeans, both slightly burned and dirty from fighting his own wards. Hair tousled and a face that looked younger than Harry's years, and a pentacle that would be identical to my own if it wasn't scarred and battered. I realized I was angry with myself, and wasn't sure why. Self-consciously, I left the burned hand out of blankets, feeling my own lips tingle where I'd kissed Justine for the last time and came away blistered. Sometimes you get burned, and it's worth it. No reason to be ashamed.

I left feeling like I'd taken a too-hot shower, to dig through the rest of the apartment for some way my brother had been accessed. It wasn't long before Mouse started up his puppy barking, and I heard Harry let out a low, guttural, angry scream.

Can a starving incubus never catch a break?


	6. An open door

I feel we should pause here so you don't get any wrong ideas. White Court vampires are a large and diverse breed of supernatural entity, and the fact that we're basically demons anchored into human beings only makes for more hellish variety. The Hunger exists before us and after us. Its chief desire is to eat our souls, so when it stirs out of our blood and starts asking to be fed, we have one of three options.

One. Burn it with its own favorite food source turned to something pure and inedible—love transforming lust, faith transforming fear, forgiveness transforming rage. If you give these things to the Hunger when it first stirs after its long hibernation of waiting time, after so much starvation while it bided away, you can kill it. And at that point your soul will be whole, unmarred. You can be a regular human being.

Two. Ignore it. The Hunger will ultimately consume your soul and use you as a vessel to feed and feed and feed, until something—often another White Court vampire—takes you down. Mindless hunger is no good for the more subtle Whites; they won't allow one of their own to rampage so openly for long.

Three. Do what all functional White Court vampires do, what defines us: strike up a deal with the Hunger, and exchange one life, one soul, in your first feeding. Think of it as a good faith payment. After that you may feed deeply or shallowly, leaving corpses in your wake or just hundreds of half-eaten meals. But the first time, no matter whether you're a phobophage, erotophage, thymophage, or whatever, is always fatal.

But despite the deal, despite all the feedings, the politics, labels and emotions, one thing sits on the bottom line, after you sweep away the bullshit. The. Hunger. Wants. My. Soul. That's what it wanted at the beginning, and it'll want that until the end. I wish I was lucky, that I loved or had faith first and burned it out of me, but I'm really just a shallow pretty boy.

The way the Hunger manifests is mostly predictable: as blood moves from parent to child, the demon given to the new vampire at birth is of a similar ilk to its predecessor. Families raise their children to feed in certain ways, and the Hunger has its necessary cravings. I was taught to feed with lust, and that tends to be what my Hunger desires. But just because its favorite food is chicken doesn't mean it can't handle beef in a pinch. And things were certainly pinching.

I'm telling you this because no, I'm not proud of all my behavior. I'm not a good man, but I can be a good brother. It's something I pride myself on. But I seem to remember warning you—yep, it's right there on page 1. Do you need a review? Didn't think so.

I wish I was lucky.

But I don't wish I was good.

I don't want asshole Wardens smiling on me or priests nodding their heads in approval. I don't need God's vindication. The bottom line is simple, and it usually is. Something wants my soul, but if it didn't, I wouldn't have the power to protect the people I give a damn about.

That's how by the time Harry, his eyes flat and dreaming, had raged his way out of bed, I was already there to kick him right back into it. For a minute he was shouting incoherently, until the word started to take on meaning, ripping out of my brother's throat like a hacksaw.

"_RAAAAAAAITH_!"

He wasn't seeing me, focusing instead on the ceiling once I had him pinned back over the covers, grasping both his forearms. He wasn't all that strong after attacking his wards, and even though I haven't been up to snuff myself, there's no way I was getting pummeled by an exhausted sleeping mortal, even if he _is_ heavier than me. Not hard to see how—he's got six inches on me and he needs more muscle to make an impact, being all human and everything, but I would think the difference would be mitigated by the missing brain tissue.

I got him where I wanted and slapped him crisply, trying to wake his ass up. He had me busy enough that I didn't quite realize the sheen until my own Hunger was perking its proverbial ears. They'd opened him again, from his dreams.

"You fell asleep on the bus," I whispered, numbly, knowing he couldn't hear me. It was more to myself anyways. That was the connection—before both attacks, he'd fallen asleep.

Whatever they'd done, they were pulling him into the Nevernever via his dreams and opening him from there—but thanks to the wards, the effect would be nullified once I had him awake. Harry was still twisting around, getting his mangled left hand on my throat and squeezing with a grip weaker than a rag doll's, the dream's memory recalling a limb that could grasp and channel power. The rest of him was putting up a good fight. I used a knee to keep his chest down and my full weight to keep him from arching and thrashing, one of my hands now keeping the right from pulling in will or throwing punches and the other over his mouth to prevent him yelling a spell.

"Harry! Wake up, man, come on! It's me! Thomas. You know, the studly vampire living on your couch who you share chromosomes with?"

Damned if that annoying asshole wasn't trying to chew on my fingers. I was getting a dim idea of what growing up with him would have been like, wrestling and punching each other and racing until our lungs exploded—

I didn't realize how cold the air around me had become until the body underneath me starting shivering in the throes of his rage dream. I removed my hand from his mouth for a moment as he stilled slightly.

"Harry? You awake?"

My brother's eyes still appeared hooded with the dream, flinty with a smoldering, paralyzing wrath. He saw beyond me to another creature, perhaps my Hunger itself, and mistook it for something similar.

"You… you bastard. You killed my mother. I'll kill you."

At the utterance of the destructive words I could feel his aura, a seething body of life force, under my hands, ebbing against me like a pulling tide. I was the child of the man who'd killed our mother, and the hateful intimacy snapped up between us, my blood to that of Lord Raith's paving a clear road for me.

_The way is open. Feed from his rage before the Alecto do. You can use it to protect him when they attack, or run the offensive. It is a small, necessary sacrifice. He would understand. How many times has he used the darkness to bring forth the light? The fire on the Red Court. And remember his mentor, what you saw in your soulgaze with him. You saw what he did to the warlock—he has rage in spades, more than enough for you to regain your strength._

Harry still struggled, but his words had grown incoherent again. He was waking up. My hand around his wrist was turning his fingers white, but I couldn't make myself let go.

"No," I muttered aloud. My eyes were locked on my brother's, where I'd once seen into his soul. He'd been damaged, battered and mauled by the darkness—like me. He'd made decisions out of rage and fear, and had sat, frightened and bewildered, under a black hood for it. But mostly, I'd seen how alone he'd been. While I'd had sisters and cousins and lovers and shallow friends in a stream of pale and glamorous lifestyle, he'd moved from orphanage to foster home, been betrayed and nearly executed, chased and persecuted by the council and vampires and assassins. He could count the people he could trust on one hand. But that was something I could understand.

_You warned him, didn't you? That this might happen. He took his chances. He played his hand. Do not look this gift horse in the mouth—he has been opened in a way for you to feed from him. Take it while you can. I will help you save him from the Alecto._

I was so hungry, and the offer took on a tempting ring. I knew the thing would be true to its promise. It would help me preserve Harry. Then in the course of destroying the Alecto, it would discover how Harry had been opened through rage and connected to me, for a deep feeding to occur. It would make sure I could do it again.

There has to be a connection. An intimacy, between the victim and the hunter. If you want lust, the prey has to be attracted to _you_. If you want fear, the prey has to be afraid of _you_, by some illusion you manifest. You need to create the fear. For rage, the prey has to see something in you that angers them. And even if there are a million other things drumming up the fear or the lust or the rage, that intimacy has to exist—some channel where you can pierce their soul's membrane. When you keep them with you, when you damage them, that connection grows larger, and deeper. Soon they grow addicted to you, used to your presence. You create the need in the damage; they can't survive without you.

I could make Harry feel so much rage that he would go insane without me there to drink it up. I could do it because he—

_No._

"You saved me. You threw in with me." My voice was a cold whisper, but it was still _my_ voice. "Wake up, little brother."

Silver light had extended out from my skin by now, meeting the charged energy coming off Harry. His eyes still burned with an anger and hatred I had seldom seen there before, and never at myself, not even when he thought I'd betrayed him to the Red Court.

I could do it again. I could bore a hole in that layer and take up his rage, because…

_He trusts you. He is a fool. He deserves to be little more than a buck. Take his rage! Did you not see how damaging it was when you glimpsed into his soul? The fires that raked his mentor, the way they haunt his dreams? You can save him from himself._

He didn't just trust me. I clenched my eyes shut, and I could see Justine beneath me, flickering out in a haze of eternal euphoria. I could see her silver hair and the form of a crippled woman, weak as noodles in a white sleep shirt.

Then I could see Harry a few months from now with desperate eyes, wavering trust as he knew, deep down, that I was feeding from him and unable to stop me, unable to turn away. His passion sucked out, the fire gone from his eyes, his rage a pale simulacrum of the righteous anger that once empowered him. Beliefs gone, and the pentacle our mother gave him dimmed forever, never to glow bright with faith again. A shell of a man.

I'd rather feed it my own soul instead. But it wouldn't save Harry. The demon in me is never sated, and it won't take an exchange.

"Thomas?"

For a second I thought he'd silently managed to conjure up a flame; it felt like someone had plunged my hand into hot water. Not boiling, not scalding, but when I finally let go of the skin around his wrist and looked at my fingers and palm, it was red. And Harry was awake.

Guys don't handle this kind of stuff well. We don't hug or kiss each other on the cheek like girls do, and we aren't great for saying shit about how we feel. But when you have a demon lashed to your soul? Sometimes it tells you forcefully.

The Hunger had skittered to a dark corner, silent and afraid. That'd show it.

Brotherly love has its own magic and pain too.


	7. Expectations

I explained to Harry, after getting him back in order, about the dream and his seeing my father through our blood connection.

"Okay, but what does that mean?" he asked, sitting on the edge of his bed while I leaned against the wall. "Can they feed on me from the Nevernever as well?"

I frowned. "I think they can activate something if you dream in the Nevernever, but the connection isn't there. They had no way to feed off you. As far as I could tell, they'd created a situation where"—I stopped dead. It's not something I'm comfortable with discussing anyways, but used on Harry? Even accidentally, I wasn't eager to have him look at me the way he might. Knowing I have the potential to hurt him in a thousand ways. Harry is safe from any erotophage feeding in their normal way—when you feed on lust, getting love in the mix is toxic. But Harry has been fed on by phobophages before and he isn't touch by the faith or forgiveness that could make him immune to them in the same manner. If I was a thymophage, I could feed from him. It was a potential, but I would have to switch over—something like what my cousin Madrigal has done. He's been lingering with the Malvora, giving power to their house, and he's become a phobophage. In response he's become weaker in a number of ways—he doesn't have the level of good looks myself or Lara possess any longer. But he can feed much more widely. I have the potential to switch—if I killed a victim after sucking out all the anger I could from them. Think of it as… moving apartments. You gotta put a deposit down first.

But that potential meant nothing, not that the Alecto knew it. They might have been tempting me to switch with Harry as bait, but I'm still an erotophage, and love still kills to touch, especially when I'm the one feeling it. I clenched my tingling hand, stinging slightly like it did after washing dishes in hot water for too long. Almost an itch, a tight feeling in the skin.

"Where what?"

I hadn't realized I'd trailed off in the middle of the sentence, and Harry, after waiting a minute for me to finish, was pushing slightly. There are a lot of things I can't share with my little brother—he's got enough wars to deal with. But when he's in direct trouble and there's no way for me to protect him without his knowing about it, he needs a modicum of truthful answers. Still, I retained my best poker face, trying not to reveal more than I should.

"Where they could get me to help them by tasting anger." I sighed. "Look, they opened you up. They were tempting me. Thymophages don't have the most powerful families, and the way we feed tends to bind us together. Maybe they thought I'd be more loyal to them if they made me crave anger instead of lust—then I would go to them for help on how to control it. And they thought maybe they'd get you in the bargain."

Harry's eyes had taken on the investigator's look. "Maybe the one they're after is you, and I'm just a bonus."

I ran a hand through my hair, and it settled back down curly, rumpled, and sexy. "Yeah, but the lust gig is so much better. They haven't got a prayer." I grinned. "I gotta hang around until they call at six. Then I'm borrowing your coat and going to meet them. You're staying here." I said this because he'd already opened his mouth. Harry is used to being in command, but today was _my_ freakshow. "Don't even think it. These are my stock, and you're in danger because I was here. If there's _anything_ I really know how to handle"—I neglected to point out that I know how to handle a _lot_—"it's the White Court."

Harry almost sounded sullen. "I know how to handle vampires." Hah. Little brothers who want to tag along. Such a pain.

"Oh yeah—like how you 'handled' Bianca by walking right into her trap?"

"You did too."

"I knew you would be there to cover me."

Harry was flabbergasted. "You knew nothing. I could've fed you to Bianca on a silver platter with an apple in your mouth."

I laughed at that. "I believe I was the one doing the apple mouth-stuffing. Face it, Harry, you're no good with subtlety. That's my department. Besides, if you walk outside the apartment, you're vulnerable to them feeding off you directly. All they have to do is make a 'your momma' joke and you'll be breathing fire, and that'll be that."

He ground his teeth, moving his jaw forward stubbornly. "I can control my anger."

"Right. Weatherman says it's awfully snowy in Hell today."

"Damnit, Thomas"—

I leaned down and got in his face. "You can't." My voice was low. "If it was fear, I'd say yes. Lust, totally—how else would you be the dateless wonder for this long? But not rage, Harry. It's made you really strong, but right now it's your weakness. Let me handle this, man."

"I'm not letting you face these guys alone. You're the only family I've got."

God, I was way too underfed and tired for this. And the room was warm again.

But of course it wasn't. Harry's subterranean apartment in winter is an icebox, and I knew that then, too. The fire in the main room was low and there's no electricity in the place—to compound matters my brother was shivering slightly. I avoided the question and the subject.

"At Bocks—was there any point where your gear could've been tampered with?"

He shook his head. "I would know, Thomas. Wearing it especially—you don't just change the purpose of a talisman or a magical tool and hand it back to a wizard. It's like handing a cocaine-filled sausage to a drug-sniffing dog."

I snorted; he was right of course. Harry might be a meathead magical thug sometimes, but he's not a total idiot—just dense.

"And the books you went through…?"

"On the level. I would've sensed mojo like that in a heartbeat. This is more like a case I had some years ago, the one I was working on when the war started."

I nodded. "The nightmare thing and that girl Lydia I helped you exorcise. Doesn't that require turbulence in the veil between the Nevernever and the mortal world?"

He nodded. "Or a large amount of energy to create a rift while I'm sleeping. But they'd need a bond to me. A way to access me."

I rubbed my temples. "Any ideas how? If they were smart they'd have a connection to your rage—then they could feed on you. But they don't."

Harry stared at the wall, trying to think. "I don't know. I should be investigating those attacks Murphy got me in on. Might give us a clue." He bit his lip for a second. "I can't leave the apartment, but if I can't sleep I might as well investigate. I was supposed to get the files from Murphy this afternoon." My brother quirked an eyebrow at me. "If I promise to be a good boy and stay here wide awake, alert, and enthusiastic, Brother Thomas, will you swing by and get them from her?" He was grinning. Wiseass.

I sneered slightly. "Sure, but you have to stay away from the stove. And I'll be pinning your medication, lunch, and mittens to your shirt before I leave."

His voice was dry and amused. "What would I do without you?"

~*~

I had several hours before the Phone Call of Doom was to arrive, and we'd established that Harry would only do his best impression of a pug getting raped by a pine cone when asleep, so I felt reasonably safe leaving him there to do some investigating. He'd sent me with a note that he was "sick"—declining my offer to tell Murphy that he needed her bedside manner posthaste—and that she should provide me with the files, sealed of course, and send along anything else he may need to know. This of course precluded him from actually getting a magical read on scenes of the crime or from the bodies themselves, but he'd have to live. I had a feeling Murphy wouldn't be tickled to hand over the files to me, but she knows I'm his brother, and so long as said files stayed sealed until I handed them to Harry, she couldn't threaten either of us with jail time. As though Harry wouldn't share the files with me anyways, honestly. Or like she could keep us in jail for long. Ah, normals. So cute.

Hopefully by now you've seen the wrench in the plans. I hung up on Murphy that day and by now she knew I'd fled the scene of the Starbucks shooting, so in the course of this I would also have to be honest with her about being there, having been shot at, and running because I'd thought Harry was in danger. I'd have to lie a little and say that I'd found out he wasn't and all was clear and had nothing at all to do with Harry suddenly being home "sick," but this wasn't my plan. Harry was right—we needed to figure out what we'd walked into. Murphy would understand me running out the way I had (Harry does it too) and she'd cover our asses. I'd just have to get around anyone trying to run me down first. Gee. Being a super-strong vampire stud couldn't possibly help me with _that_.

I took Mouse with me just in case—he's good company when you're walking into potential danger. He can't fit in Harry's coat pocket anymore, which I was currently making a suave fashion statement out of, but he senses Bad Things much more keenly than I or even Harry does, and he's awfully loud about it. And did I mention how much easier it is to cruise for girls when you have a puppy?

Oh yeah. That. I was also planning on grabbing a psychic bite while I was out. And making it up to Harry by bringing him a steak sandwich.

Yeah, okay, that's guilt talking. I hate the look on his face when he knows I've just fed—two parts disgust, three parts disappointment, and ten parts confusion and ambiguity, adding up to fifteen parts translated shame on my end. It's one thing to loathe yourself for something, but when someone expects better out of you and wants you to be good, or at least _better_ and you just can't be—it hurts to watch. It would be nice if he didn't have those expectations, but my brother believes in me. If only I could find a way to live up to that belief.

Instead I found myself keeping an eye out for likely prey on my drive to the department, listening to my Hunger gleefully give me information about each one, ways of seducing, temptations to make me act faster.

In the immortal words of Popeye: _I yam what I yam, and that's all that I yam._

I drove Harry's little shit-mobile with its gay pride colors and alley surplus interior, while Mouse got his little fuzzy head out the window to bite at the cold air whipping his ears around. My demon chose a woman-free stretch of road to change subjects on me, sounding low and persuasive.

_We could switch, you know. I would adapt well to rage. There would be more options open to us—not as delicious as lust, of course, but we could feed from others. From enemies instead of loved ones. You would be sated. You could be with our sweet Justine again, protect your brother, hold down any job you like_._ When well-fed you could stop others from being affected by the lure._

Yeah, that lure. The lure of thymophages makes people around them turn irritated, angry and hateful, unleashing pent-up anger. Unless they stay well-fed, fights will break out around them. Sounds worse than women taking their clothes off at random when you walk by.

The offer was tempting, but if there's one thing I could say about being an erotophage, it's at least knowing what I deal with. I don't need anyone training me, and there aren't any nasty surprises. And it keeps males (especially related males) safe from me, as well as those I know are touched by love—like Justine. If I truly switched to a thymophage—and I don't just mean sipping rage in a pinch, I mean truly Switching Over—love would stop affecting me. My own love wouldn't harm me. And it wouldn't stop me.

_Your brother would be open, true. But he could stand to lose some rage. Were he to forgive what was done to your mother, he would be immune_.

I stopped the car with a screech of tires, making Mouse tumble to the floor with a puppy whimper.

"That's it," I said to the dog, aloud. Mouse perked his ears and turned his head to the side, inquisitive. The demon had said it to seduce me, but I had sensed the truth in its words—it's in my soul, after all. It may try lying to me, but I can usually tell. "If Harry forgave, really forgave something awful that's been done to him. Something at the root of all the anger he normally feels. He'd be immune." I sat there, letting the revelation wear away slightly. People who have true faith are immune to phobophages—I've seen it first hand. Being touched my forgiveness runs along those lines, but it has to be deep.

I could never forgive someone like Justin DuMorne or my father for the things they'd done. Harry is a decent man, but he's no saint.

I made a note to myself to ask someone I knew for advice on the theory of forgiveness and started back up on my hunt for a pretty lady, spotting one with nice curves who walked with her head down, towards an empty apartment nearby, a cat and an empty bed, TV dinner in the freezer and a favorite program on the tube. Perfect.

Mouse gave me a small growl, as though sensing what I planned.

"Hey, do I begrudge you your kibble? Get on the lead and look cute."


End file.
